


The Silence Made Me Do it

by EnberDusk (EnberLight), EnberLight



Category: Miraculous Ladybug, Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Soul Bond, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-21 03:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13732128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnberLight/pseuds/EnberDusk, https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnberLight/pseuds/EnberLight
Summary: 30 minutes. 1 song. A quick trip into the fantasy worlds and fandoms floating around inside my head. Updates are weekly on Sunday evenings. What did my friend get me into.Expect fantasy settings of my own creation, and AU's for Miraculous Ladybug and Chat Noir. Snippets here may show up later in ongoing chapter fics, or be randomly continued in future installments.The stories so far...Ch2: Sleeping Sun(OW, F/F)An endless night on the tundra, where Yierin reaches out for Cejureiz. But will there be a response on the other side of their bond?Ch3: Radioactive(ML, Upcoming Chapter fic!)Marinette stands too close to the edge of a world that her friends belong to, poised to tumble into it unprepared. Teaser for ML Fandom fic "To the Bidder Go the Spoils"





	1. Index

30-minute song prompt challenge – you can thank SilentMagi for inviting me into this! It’s a weekly thing that will be posted on Sundays, here and on tumblr (SilentMagi, Logo-comics, and EnberLight). So, any initial blame or thanks can go directly to them for pulling me into this ^x^

 

**Chapter Index**

  * One - Index
  * Two - Sleeping Sun  
An endless night on the tundra, where Yierin reaches out for Cejureiz. But will there be a response on the other side of their bond? (G, F/F, OC Original Work)
  * Three - Radioactive  
Marinette stands too close to the edge of a world that her friends belong to, poised to tumble into it unprepared. Teaser for ML Fandom fic "To the Bidder Go the Spoils"  
Marinette, Nino, and Alya (background Alya x Nino) (T here, M/E on full fic! No warnings this snippet.)



 


	2. Sleeping Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The song given to me for this week's challenge was "Sleeping Sun" by Nightwish

Spring green eyes closed slowly against the night-that-wasn’t, as the young mage focused inward on her task. Her tawny chin was tucked into the collar of her winter parka against the gentle but freezing gusts of wind that caressed the frozen tundra, her shallow cave and thin fur doing little to guard against it. She resisted the urge to pull the warm hood up over her tall, bare ears – it wasn’t quite cold enough to damage them, though it was uncomfortable. The confinement of the hood, the claustrophobia that came with trapping her ears and muffling the world around her, would be far more detrimental to her task.

Besides, for this, she needed to feel the cold. It was, after all, what she was reaching for, the thread feeling thin in the snow-lit night. There, not snapped, but faint. More thin than faded, but without the proper focus, that thread would melt away to the beyond, the other end beyond her reach, and it would be years yet before it would rejoin the world, to return to her again. And there was no guarantee their forms would find each other again in this life. It had been but a distant chance this time…

She sighed deeply, breath puffing visibly around her dark, whiskered nose, tiny crystals clinging to the edges of the umber stripes upon her cheeks. She banished the thoughts of her time Before away from her, turning them instead to what she had gained from following the thread so long ago. Steeling herself, she reached forward, claw-tipped fingers darting free from the warm flaps of the parka to stretch out above a small humanoid figure sculpted from ice that sat before her, gleaming in the snow-reflected light. She clenched her jaw, the corners of her eyes crinkling in fierce concentration as she reached out to the entity represented by the sculpture, to the being at the other end of the cold, ghostly thread she clung to in her mind. She pictured the flesh, cool and white beneath deep cobalt armor plate, tall spikes of frosted blue rising from the shoulders and back plate, surrounding a rounded face, hardened by battles and the tundra, eyes a stark white that glared upon the world, but softened when falling upon her. The thread pulsed, quickened, pulled where it was bound to her chest, and the young felid allowed herself a slight smile that tugged the corner of her lips. But it faded quickly, the serious set of her expression returning as she focused. The warmth of the bond was pleasant, but it was fleeting, for she knew how close to fading it had come in the past weeks. 

If she could hold onto the timeless moment as the thread pulsed in response to her call, she would. But holding a memory of warmth was not the same as having her companion return to her, and that was her goal – risky though it was to pull the thread so, to tax herself this long keeping it intact, reaching for the woman at the other end, the one who was just now very nearly a part of the tundra itself. Her breath shook, but she refused to let her resolve waver. She had set out to do this, she had committed to sustaining her partner through this hibernation, to bringing her back, even as she felt the tipping point of the void lingering just beyond the other end of the thread. Stilling her shaking hands, she visualized the figure she sought, sleeping before her, beneath the shallow snow just past the figurine. The hard set of her jaw, the curve of her short ivory tusks, the scar that danced just so across her cheekbone beneath her left eye. 

A clenching within her chest had her gasping, but she did not falter in her focus as the thread twanged between them. It was stronger than it had been in weeks, but she could feel the agitation within the magic of it, that she was tampering with it so, letting her own life course along its bond to the one who rested at the other end. Still she called, time fading away from her in the endless night, her only thoughts of the still figure concealed before her. A figure, tall and imposing, that literally dwarfed her own stunted stature. She took comfort in it, her rock, her ice monolith, not letting her mind travel the paths of thought that would negate the false permanence such a figure implied, the susceptibility of all mortals to the void that had so nearly called the sleeping one back to its hold. Her breath shook, ragged in her chest from the strain, but still she reached through the thread, holding her bonded’s image firm within her mind, eyes closed to the cold and the possibility that all might remain still before her, no matter how hard she pulled, no matter how much of her own life she teased through the thread to tempt fate to pull the void back and away.

Even the wind itself had stilled, the night had progressed further as she focused on her task. How far was unknown, this far north, the night would not yet end for weeks yet, stars keeping a timeless vigil overhead, scattered reflections of the hauntingly lit snow. But a sound came to the stillness, a scraping, the sigh of snow and ice shifting. A tremble coursed through her but she stilled her hands over the figure, not letting go of the vision within her mind, the image of the thread thickening, glowing before her. She kept her eyes closed, almost afraid to trust her frozen ears at the grinding, grunting shift of the tundra a few feet ahead of her, as it released the offspring it had nearly reclaimed. 

Only when she felt heavy, chilled fingers run gently along her jaw did she lower her hands, and let her weary eyelids flutter open. Gold-flecked spring green met intense white, and the felid finally let a trembling smile overtake her lips as she leaned into the embrace of the tall warrior who knelt before her. One giant hand wrapped around her slight back, the other clumsily patting her hair, dusting snow and frozen crystals from her nearly frostbitten ears.

“Oh, Yierin…” the giantess’s voice was gruff with disuse and emotion, fond and scolding simultaneously. “You silly, foolish cat… you could have gone back to your southern forests and finally been warm again.”

The little mage chuckled mirthlessly, the sound faint through her exhaustion. “I am plenty warm enough with you, Cejureiz… how could I leave when this is the one place that could give you back to me?” She let her eyes close with a sigh, energy expended, and traded her partner’s eternal sleep for her own, much shorter one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The characters I’m reviving here date back… a good bit, to the last major roleplay I was a part of. They’re reimagined here into new races that would fit better into my novel world, but the relationship they have here is a spin-off of the one they had back then (circa 2006, eep). I’ll leave just how romantic their bond is up to interpretation, at least on this round, but it’s something akin to soulmates. It doesn’t necessarily mean a romantic fate for them, as love and bonds can take many forms. But we’ll see just how it shapes up for them if I revisit their characters in the future. They have a lot of backstory that never made it onto paper (or a computer screen, as it was). So there’s a good chance they’ll make another appearance. 
> 
> As the characters really aren't known here (and haven't made an online appearance in years), to be brief, Yierin is a bipedal felid, and Cejureiz is a kind of ice giantess. Both have limited elemental abilities - what's represented here isn't part of that, but part of the bond they share between them and Yierin using something co-opted from general magic and tweaked for the bond, rather than her own inherent skills (which work more with greenery). They are both adults and have been for the time they've known each other.
> 
> Please let me know in the comments what you thought, and whether you want to know more about these two – we’ll see how my muse behaves on future installments!


	3. Radioactive (ML AU: TTBGTS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Week two of the song prompt challenge is "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons. I... didn't actually get to the part of the plot I wanted to show here within the 30 minute time limit. Oops? See, I knew it wouldn't be a good idea to venture into one of my ML plot bunnies. There's Too Much There, even for this (relatively) mini one.
> 
> So... have the first part of Chapter 1 instead! This fic takes a darker turn and will have some adult content in later chapters, so the full version will be on my EnberDusk account, rather than continuing in this little challenge collection. This teaser, however, is quite tame. There's one curse word, egads, the corruption levels in this! Absolutely absurd. So no warnings for this little piece.
> 
> Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug and Chat Noir  
> Characters: Marinette, Alya, Nino (Alya x Nino background)

The sounds of laughter filled the air, punctuated by the tapping of mallets, and the low grunting of workers as tent poles were rocked loose from their holes and heaved forth from the earth, and heavy support beams were lowered to the ground or stacked into waiting carts. Marinette’s face fell a little as she wove her way through the organized chaos, what was just yesterday a camp of brightly colored tents and stands was already only scattered wooden skeletons now. By sunset, even those would be gone, leaving nothing but muddy tracks and the memories of shows and stories that would be told in her town for months, possibly years to come. She sighed heavily, shifting the stack of paper-bound packages in her arms as she dodged a support pole and sidestepped a mud puddle. She turned her focus back to the task at hand, rather than the regret that the troupe was leaving. Her face brightened as she spotted her friends across the way, steps lightening over the rutted paths as she sped up to join two of the performers, waiting next to their orange and blue house-wagon.

“Alya!” Marinette called out to gain the woman’s attention, and she turned from the young man she was talking to, bright eyes glinting in the mid-day sun even from this distance. A smile lit her face, and she gestured broadly for Marinette to hurry over, then winced as the rushing young woman nearly tripped herself on one of the muddy wheel ruts. Alya’s companion dove forward, catching the stack of packages as they tipped forward from Marinette’s arms. She chuckled self-deprecatingly, righting herself before she could muddy her skirts. “Thanks, Nino.”

“Don’t mention it, kid,” he grinned back at her, blinking briefly as his arms were suddenly emptied. A glance to his right showed that the oddly lumpy packages were in the custody of his wife now, who was torn between pawing them open right there, or getting them into their home first where they could be properly (and safely) unwrapped. “Alya, honestly, slow down! Come on in, Marinette, I don’t think she can restrain herself this time.”

A genuine laugh escaped her lips this time, Marinette shaking her head as she watched Alya rush up the little ladder steps and into the structure. “I hope you don’t mind, I did some extra embellishments along with the repairs. I gave them a little extra flash…” She followed her friend up inside, to be greeted by a gasp as Alya had already eased the bindings and the paper from the packages.

“Oh Marinette, they’re perfect!” The giddy woman shook out one of the layered dresses, one that had been sewn from airy fabrics in autumn hues, the skirts formed from overlapping scarves scattered with glass beads, the facets catching even the dim light within the enclosed wagon. On the table behind her several other dresses, trousers, and shirts were laid out, in a range of rich jewel tones. Most glistened and gleamed with embroidery, glass, and simple polished stones. “These are fit for royalty, hun! I swear they’re hardly the same old, worn garments I gave you to patch! …in fact, I’m pretty sure some of these aren’t… Oh Marinette…”

The dark-haired girl blushed at the accusatory but loving stare leveled her way, and shook her head slowly to defer any lectures. “Okay so maybe I completely redid a couple of them… but I swear I had the work mostly done already! And these will go so much nicer with the production. You’d think you were using magic, I don’t know how you do it! You really make the stories come to life, you need clothes to live up to your skills!”

Alya chuckled low, a strange glint in her golden eyes as she smirked at the impressionable young woman before her. “We’re traveling performers, what would we be without a few magic tricks?” Outside the wagon Nino huffed out a soft laugh of his own, barely audible over the sounds of the camp disassembling around them.

Marinette smiled fondly, dismissing it as a joke and shaking her head. “Of course, a “Fox” has to have her tricks, doesn’t she?”

“But of course,” Alya returned, smiling slyly. “Thanks so much for this, I really don’t feel like we’re paying you enough for these. Are you sure you can’t come with us? You’ll be a famous seamstress in no time, make it big in one of the major cities on our route.”

“I really can’t,” Marinette demurred, her smile sad. “Maybe next year. Right now, Mama and Papa need me more at the bakery. And I make good enough money on the side right here…”

“But you really aren’t doing what you want to, just repairing regular clothes. I know you love doing THIS,” Alya gently shook the autumn-hued dress for emphasis, the scarves swirling and beads glistening. “Fancy things, flashy things, ROYAL things.”

“And I will, Alya, I promise. Just. Mama is sick, I can’t go just yet, it’s too much for Papa to handle alone. When she’s better…”

“I understand, girl, I do.” Alya set the dress down reverently, wrapping the smaller woman in a hug that was quickly returned. She ruffled Marinette’s ebony hair, then let it fall back down around her slim shoulders. “Family is important, and that’s where you need to be right now. But. NEXT time we come through…”

“NEXT time you come through, you can try again to spirit me away with your ‘magical’ caravan of wonders, Alya.”

The russet-haired performer squeezed Marinette’s shoulders and tutted at her. “Hey now, watch your phrasing, dear. What if I was some fae creature and that was a contract you just signed with your words? You’d better watch your tongue around strange folks, little lady.”

A bemused huff escaped Marinette’s lips. “Ah, but if you were as magical as you claim, you would have enchanted away half the populace by now, Alya.”

“Hah, see, that’s where you’re wrong, hun. If we enchanted everyone into following us from every town, who would we perform for on the next turn through? We have to leave the people here to make the money, so that they throw the money at us on the next trip around!”

Nino piped up from the front steps, laughter in his voice. “It’s a good thing you keep your true powers under wraps, then, love, I don’t want to have to fight off quite that many suitors… Or be responsible for feeding their lovelorn asses as they follow the caravan…”

“Ever practical…” Alya blew a kiss at him and he caught it over his shoulder without looking, a grin making his ears shift higher beneath his lopsided cap. “So, Marinette, can you stay long, or…?”

“Sorry, Alya, but I’m going to have to dart right back. I need to help with the evening rush, and it won’t do to be stuck outside of town when the sun sets… not now that the Troupe Town won’t be lit…” Alya pulled her in for another hug, and the two squeezed each other tight, neither saying an actual goodbye. It wasn’t their way.

“Til next turn then, little sister. Keep yourself with care.”

“And you, Alya, Nino.” He ruffled the top of her head as she passed him on the stairs, and she gave him a quick side hug. “Send word when you reach the next town! I want to hear all about the new show you’re debuting there!”

“Of course!” Alya and Nino waved as Marinette trotted off, weaving back through the dwindling campground to the town just past the rise. Alya’s eyes went to the forest that curved in to the sides of the camp, a look of focus tightening her expression as she sighed. Nino could almost see a tail stiffen behind her as she pursed her lips. “I really wish she would come with us, Nino,” she murmured, unease in her voice.

“You know we can’t make her, and the seer’s warning is no guarantee… She’ll weather this if it does come, Alya. She’ll be fine, and we’ll find her again. Maybe then, we’ll even be able to tell her…” His voice trailed off, sadness in his tone. He’d known Marinette from childhood, she was as dear to him as a sister, but she had no inkling of the world he’d become a part of at Alya’s side. A world she’d have to stumble into on her own, soon, if an old fortune teller’s vague warnings were to be taken seriously. Sometimes nothing much came of them, the pomp and flash of the profession blowing the glimpses of true possibilities out of proportion. But even Alya was on edge, which had him worried. She had a knack for reading the air, and to see her so serious did not bode well for the fledgling seamstress and her small family back in the bakery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this little bit is a teaser for "To the Bidder Go the Spoils," a Demon!AU I'm working on based on characters from Miraculous Ladybug and Chat Noir. You might have noticed that things are a little odd here. I didn't get far enough to show you just how much, so watch the EnberDusk account for the full chapter and continuing story! I'll be adding to this and polishing it up a bit before it shows up there.
> 
> Just be aware, it will have adult themes in later chapters. I will warn for content there as necessary... It's going on Dusk because it's not a gentle kiddie fic. It will be one of my happier ones overall, though? (And as far as warnable blows go, it's going to be downright kind compared to two of my other AU arcs. I don't know why my bunnies thrive on angst...)
> 
> Please let me know what you think in the comments! This is un-beta'd and written on a time limit, so if you spot a grammar snafu or sticky bit, let me know.


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